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Loved 4-5 and 8. Loved the last 40 minutes of 6 but i have to overlook the ewoks. Enjoyed the last 30 minutes of 3. Liked 7 a lot. Enjoyed a lot of 9, like some of it but was disappointed with most of it. However, I've only seen it twice so that could change.

1-2 can burn in hell.

5 minutes ago, Bacon said:

I overrated 3 for years but it's still decent. FROM MY PERSPECTIVE, THE JEDI ARE EVIL is its idea of good dialogue, but you get what you came for. ﻿

Love won't save you Padme, only my new powers can.

Edited December 26, 2019 by Momma There Goes That Man

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Empire is a fairly dark follow-up to ANH and there have been darker stories in extended canon. I guess it's telling that after ESB they went the opposite direction and really leaned into Kids Corner with ewoks and slapstick hijinx in ROTJ

Dark in the same way that LOTR is dark. Star Wars and Empire were written for adults (in a way that kids and families could enjoy) the way a lot of great SFF is. I think that's one of the reasons I gravitated to it as a genre. As a kid, I was entirely bored by the children's section in the library. By the age of ten, I pretty much jumped from picture books to Xanth, Pern, and the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

When I say dark, the modern definition often has a cruel connotation to it, a hopeless connotation that implies the world sucks and will only get worse (Think Game of Thrones). Star Wars was never DARK. I agree it did have some serious elements.

Edit: Maybe I'd use the word "tough" instead of dark. I realize I'm being very nerdy here. lol

That's an interesting one. I do like the idea of expanding the "magic" of the Force, but the healing powers are a little problematic as you can imagine that these powers ought to have been in play much earlier. You can make an excuse for Luke in the original trilogy because he was barely trained and rushed out unprepared, but in the prequels with the Jedis as their height and Annakin being in the Jedi Academy itself (not to mention having Yoda and all the rest there) you'd think that Jedi healing would have been a thing.

I'm happy to overlook it as a continuity flaw because I liked how it worked in the story, but it is problematic and something an editor would demand more explanation for the convenience of this power suddenly emerging so late in the story.

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The movie's entire soul is just crushed by it's inability or rather unwillingness to do anything interesting or do anything that might spark a controversy among the fans.

The whole "chewbacca was on a different transport" was basically Glenn sliding under a dumpster in The Walking Dead when he should have been eaten alive. It was an awful walking back of a bold choice and an opportunity to explore something truly unique in this entire series. Why do this? What did Chewbacca contribute to this movie that he had to remain alive? Oh he got a medal. That was a fan service meta joke anyway. He had a nice heartfelt reaction to Leia passing. That was nice but it was a correction of JJ's original error in TFA by not giving Chewie and Leia a moment together after Han's death. This would have been something really nice to explore, a hero literally killing a fan favorite by mistake because her powers are so strong and she gave in to her anger for a moment not realizing this would be the outcome. This fakeout destroyed any tension or stakes that the movie had and was followed rather quickly by C3PO's sacrifice for his friends being immediately undone too.

It just torpedo'd the emotion of the movie for me and made scenes like Ben's turn and even Rey's death or the final confrontation with Palpatine fall flat because there was no real tension.

JJ Abrams didn't have it in him to create something unique and neither did Disney after TLJ cry babies and this was the result. It's literally a check-off box of every Star Wars cliche possible thrown into one ridiculous movie. It has nothing interesting to say. It proposes no questions for the audience. Ultimately, that made it impossible for it to be special.

I never understood the reaction of Chewie and Leia at the of TFA either. You'd think that there would be something there. It was like Jon Snow not petting Ghost.

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yeah that was the time to have chewie break down and Leia console him and they could have a moment.

jon snow bailing on ghost is a good comparison ﻿

Spoiler

I think that might have been the reason why I was so happy when Chewie got his medal at the end of Rise of Skywalker. It rectified the omission at the end of Star Wars when Luke and Han were awarded and Chewie was left out. Chewie needed to be treated as an equal non-human, not a subhuman or pet at least amongst the good guys.

By the time of The Force Awakens, Chewie and Leia should be really good friends if not proto-family. If they're not, we need a story reason explaining why their relationship never developed/fell apart. Chewie mourning Leia with just as much force as he mourned Han is Rising felt right.

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I thought Kenobi was good overall. Visually it gets A marks from me. But It's not as beautiful or spellbinding as Dark Legacy, at least for me.

I would have loved even more ambiance of the natural world with Obi-Wan, seeing art house montages of him venturing out into the desert for days at a time on solo hikes, nearing starvation, on the verge of dehydration, desperately trying to contact Qui-gon, breaking down emotionally from silence, from remorse, from tiredness. Then finding little truths and reassurances of the force from the natural world and from within himself.

Another short could have been Obi-Wan's flirtation with the Mos Eisley cantina. Explore his first visit, how often he went there, little story thread that originated from there.

Comparatively I just loved the visuals and especially the sound of Dark Legacy. It was so tactually full.

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Definitely enjoyed the movie but was just there for the Abrams ride. He can really ramp up the pacing, going from one stunning location/scene/visual and hammering you with the next, next, next, etc.

Really not invested in the story anymore. 7-9 just isn't a coherent trilogy, its more like 3 separate sequels.

Don't think I'll be excited for Star Wars again unless it gets back that Space Western feel. The SciFi elements don't hold up and the fantasy elements have turned the force into a bunch of Superheroes with Superpowers.

So I'd say there are 6 good Star Wars movies and 5 that are average-to-bad.

I'm close. The above is how I'd probably rate them. Solo was a fine Summer flick. Forgettable. Neither good nor bad. I think it gets a little too beat up. It was a pure two star movie in my book. Flawed, but fun and stupid.

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I'm close. The above is how I'd probably rate them. Solo was a fine Summer flick. Forgettable. Neither good nor bad. I think it gets a little too beat up. It was a pure two star movie in my book. Flawed, but fun and stupid.

I wish I had more fun watching it. I think bringing in Ron Howard was a mistake because he struggles with making movies that look and feel fun. He's got this really cold, staid visual style that didn't fit the kind of movie Solo wanted to be. Does anyone really want Star Wars to look like The DaVinci Code?

Lord and Miller would have made a much better film IMO.

Edited December 27, 2019 by Bacon

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I think that might have been the reason why I was so happy when Chewie got his medal at the end of Rise of Skywalker. It rectified the omission at the end of Star Wars when Luke and Han were awarded and Chewie was left out. Chewie needed to be treated as an equal non-human, not a subhuman or pet at least amongst the good guys.

By the time of The Force Awakens, Chewie and Leia should be really good friends if not proto-family. If they're not, we need a story reason explaining why their relationship never developed/fell apart. Chewie mourning Leia with just as much force as he mourned Han is Rising felt right.

I don't know how I never realized that about the end of a New Hope. I think I had just assumed that Chewie had one. So Lucas messed around with the OT, even destroying two iconic scenes and they couldn't get Chewie a medal thrown in?

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I wish I had more fun watching it. I think bringing in Ron Howard was a mistake because he struggles with making movies that look and feel fun. He's got this really cold, staid visual style that didn't fit the kind of movie Solo wanted to be. Does anyone really want Star Wars to look like The DaVinci Code?

Lord and Miller would have made a much better film IMO. ﻿

I thought Splash and Cocoon were pretty fun. Then again, if I'm being honest, I don't really remember Solo, Splash, or Cocoon well enough to make an argument about any of them. Solo in particular was pretty forgettable.

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I wish I had more fun watching it. I think bringing in Ron Howard was a mistake because he struggles with making movies that look and feel fun. He's got this really cold, staid visual style that didn't fit the kind of movie Solo wanted to be. Does anyone really want Star Wars to look like The DaVinci Code?

Lord and Miller would have made a much better film IMO.

You can't put it on Ron Howard though. He was the only director that was willing to come in and take over another director's project that was in such a catastrophic state. It was a full-blown emergency reaching critical mass for Disney with release deadlines already placed...it was a miracle Ron salvaged the production.

Edit - Added this. The Lord and Miller dailies were so bad that Disney hit the nuke button. Acting coaches were also hired for the cast on set to accomodate the slap-stick style Lord and Miller were trying to do.

Edited December 27, 2019 by Metalhead

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You can't put it on Ron Howard though. He was the only director that was willing to come in and take over another director's project that was in such a catastrophic state. It was a full-blown emergency reaching critical mass for Disney with release deadlines already placed...it was a miracle Ron salvaged the production.

Edit - Added this. The Lord and Miller dailies were so bad that Disney hit the nuke button. Acting coaches were also hired for the cast on set to accomodate the slap-stick style Lord and Miller were trying to do.

Ron Howard certainly got the film out on time. That's the nicest thing I can say about his contribution though.

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Solo was alright. I hated that it was made but it wasn't a complete disaster like many expected. Young Lando and Emilia Clarke stole the show. I still don't understand what the hell the Kessel Run was, why it's a big deal that he took a shortcut and why that would become some legendary accomplishment. They really butchered that imo. Also it sucked introducing Maul back into the movies. That was stupid.

The best thing I thought it did was show the empire from a different perspective and show some of the origins of the OT rebels.

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Solo was alright. I hated that it was made but it wasn't a complete disaster like many expected. Young Lando and Emilia Clarke stole the show. I still don't understand what the hell the Kessel Run was, why it's a big deal that he took a shortcut and why that would become some legendary accomplishment. They really butchered that imo. Also it sucked introducing Maul back into the movies. That was stupid.

I thought they tried to throw WAY too many things into one movie. Which meant that they couldn't spend very much time on any of them.